Five dead in Tehama County, possibly started as domestic dispute: reporterMedia: KTVU

Tehama shooting: Latest news

Media: San Francisco Chronicle

RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Tehama County — Just before he went on a shooting rampage that left four bodies strewn throughout this small rural community, Kevin Janson Neal gunned down his wife and stuffed her body under their house through a hole he cut in the floorboards, investigators said Wednesday.

Neal apparently killed his wife Monday night, said Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston. Neighbors told investigators they believed the couple had a fight earlier that day, he added. The next morning, just before 8 a.m., Neal started roaming the community firing homemade guns at seemingly anyone — some apparently targeted, others randomly encountered.

“We believe that is what started this whole event,” Johnston said of the slaying of Neal’s wife, whose name was not revealed but whom court records suggest was Barbara Neal, 39. He added, however, that exact details on what prompted the gunman to begin his slaughter are still unknown.

“I don’t know what his motive was,” Johnston said. “I think he was just on a rampage. I think he had a desire to kill as many people as he could, and whether or not he had a desire to die at the hands of police I don’t know.”

The home at 6970 Bobcat lane on Wednesday Nov. 15, 2017, in Rancho Tehama, Ca. Kevin Janson Neal, 43 went on a shooting spree yesterday morning killing five people and wounding ten.

The home at 6970 Bobcat lane on Wednesday Nov. 15, 2017, in Rancho Tehama, Ca. Kevin Janson Neal, 43 went on a shooting spree yesterday morning killing five people and wounding ten.

Regardless, he said, the day boiled down to this: “Madman on the loose.”

Neal, 43, was shot dead by deputies after a 25-minute killing spree in which he drove two stolen vehicles around town firing at neighbors, other drivers and into a school with about 100 students. The school, Rancho Tehama Elementary, went on lockdown after gunshots sounded — and that is what prevented Neal’s rampage in this unincorporated town of 1,500, located just southwest of Red Bluff, from becoming much worse, Johnston said.

“It’s monumental that that school went on lockdown,” he said. “I believe we would have had a bloodbath. ... I can’t say how important that is.”

The first 911 call to authorities came at 7:54 a.m., and Neal was shot at 8:19 a.m.

Johnston said some clues to what set Neal off could come from quotes in the media from his mother, who said he was frustrated with his neighbors. He reportedly told her Monday, “It’s all over now.”

Those neighbors included two of the slaying victims, and Tehama County Superior Court papers indicate a nasty dispute with them had been threatening to explode for months.

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On Jan. 31, Neal allegedly burst into the home of Diana Steele, 68, beating her and stabbing Hailey Poland, 33, the girlfriend of Steele’s son. Steele, her son Danny Elliott, Poland and Steele’s husband all lived in the same house — which is two doors down from Neal’s. During the attack, Neal allegedly fired a gun to scare the family.

On Tuesday, Steele and Elliott were shot to death early in the rampage.

Poland obtained a restraining order on Feb. 8, and wrote in her filing that Neal “has verbally abused every house member (including child) ... he’s shot firearms unsafely at all hours, yelling and screaming that he’s going to do all kinds of perverted things to harm everyone.”

Neal was arrested the same day as the January attack, and bailed out immediately. He was still out on $160,000 bail when he went on his shooting spree, said Tehama County District Attorney Gregg Cohen. Poland’s restraining order was also still in effect.

Cohen said Neal had no criminal convictions on his record, but he’d been arrested four times in North Carolina and Northern California on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assault with a deadly weapon. After he was released on bail, Cohen said, Neal continued to harass the family, and he called the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to say he believed they were cooking methamphetamine.

Other relatives of Neal’s told the Associated Press and the Sacramento Bee, variously, that Neal was raised in North Carolina, struggled with mental issues and worked odd jobs, including rebuilding old cars and selling them. The cluttered yard of his home on Bobcat Lane on Wednesday had cars and car parts in various states of disrepair.

Investigators recovered two semiautomatic rifles Neal used in the shootings, and said they had been illegally “manufactured” at his house, possibly using mail-order parts. They also recovered two pistols Neal used, and they were not registered to him, Johnston said.

Hand-building his own rifles doesn’t mean Neal was necessarily a gunsmith. Building a weapon from a parts kit is commonplace. Websites from such companies as “Cheaper Than Dirt!” offer semiautomatic rifle build kits for around $400, and with the addition of a receiver — the part that contains the firing mechanism — a gun-kit weapon can be assembled by a hobbyist of minimum skill.

California passed a law last year that made hand-built guns more difficult to assemble. But the new law did not affect countless hand-built weapons already produced.

Regardless, Neal was prohibited from owning guns by the restraining order against him.

In addition to Neal’s wife, Steele and Elliott, another woman was killed on a roadway, and the father of one of the students at the school was shot dead.

In all, there were 14 shooting victims including the deceased and seven children — four of whom were injured at the school. None of the children was killed, although one was in critical condition Wednesday at a hospital with gunshot wounds. The youngest child injured was a 2-year-old boy.

One of the shooting victims, a woman driving with her children in a pickup truck, had a concealed weapons permit and pulled her pistol when Neal attacked her, Johnston said. But she wasn’t able to get off any shots.

“After dumping eight or so rounds into the side panel of her door,” the gunman sped off, he said.

Throughout the day Wednesday, friends and relatives filed in and out of the Steele family home on Bobcat Lane to console Steele’s husband, Bob Steele.

Jessie Sanders said Elliott was “my best friend, my only friend,” and that Neal had been feuding with him as well as the Steele family for some time. Bob Steele has dementia, he said, and was having to be told about his wife’s death again every few hours — making him relive the pain afresh over and over.

“I’m pretty pissed off, to be honest,” said Sanders, who confronted the shooter Tuesday at the school and showed a wound on his right elbow that he said came from a bullet Neal fired. “I know this whole thing was preventable if the cops had listened to us. It’s been a nightmare.”

He said he heard gunshots frequently at Neal’s house and called police to complain, but the problem never eased.

Neal, he said, “had a negative aura about him. He had blue eyes, but I swear the color of his eyes changed recently. They went dark.”

On Tuesday, Sanders said, he heard shots at the school, ran over from his mother’s nearby home, and saw Neal shooting. “I said, ‘Why don’t you shoot where there aren’t any kids?’” Sanders said, “and as he was reloading he smiled at me.”

After he grazed Sanders with a shot, Neal got into a truck and tried to run him over, Sanders said. Shortly after that, deputies shot Neal to death.

“A year ago, he told me and Danny and Hailey that we’re going to pay,” Sanders said. “I almost think he was going to the school to kill our kids.”

Johnston said police had been called to Neal’s house repeatedly in recent months for complaints of shots being fired, but that Neal wouldn’t come to the door.

“At least twice, officers put the house under surveillance,” hoping to catch him leaving so they could question him, but it was unsuccessful, Johnston said.

Neal, he added, was “not law enforcement-friendly.”

Leo Barone, an attorney who represented Neal when he was charged with stabbing Steele, said his client fired him after being confronted about his “strange behavior.”

“The impression that I got was that he didn’t like being questioned,” Barone said.

Adrian Pena, 27, said he had just dropped his two young children, aged 8 and 6, off at the elementary school Tuesday and was in his truck when he saw “a crazy man” start shooting through a campus window. Pena tried to speed away but got stuck in a ditch, so he took off running — and that’s when the shooter noticed him, he said.

“I heard shots,” Pena said. “I thought he was shooting at me. I heard him screaming, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ It was crazy.”